The present invention relates to a radiator for building heating and cooling, more specifically to a fluid media radiator designed for installation adjacent to a building window. It offers dramatic improvements in energy efficiency and appearance, and because of its location and lower temperature differential radiation, increases the usage of room perimeter space. The design has mechanical expansion tolerance resulting in protection from damage to the radiator caused by fluid freezing. The overarching concept is for the thermal losses or gains at the perimeter of a building (generally at the windows) to be addressed directly at their source, allowing the central heating and cooling systems to be dramatically downsized while incorporating freeze damage protection for the radiator.
Perimeter room heating is well known in such systems as hot water radiators, electric registers, and forced hot air systems. However, this is not the case for the cooling systems. Generally these ventilate cold air (not a fluid) through a centralized room location.
Radiators provide a combination of radiation and convection of thermal energy. These all suffer common drawbacks in that they occupy space at the floor-wall interface, and require additional room between adjacent furnishings to operate safely or at full efficiency. Additionally, they are located at some distance from the most common source of thermal loss (both hot and cold egress)—the windows. Thus, most require extreme differences between the heat transfer media (fluid or gas) and the ambient air for adequate thermal energy transfer. Since the driving force for the transfer of energy from the room heating/cooling system is a function of the differential between the surrounding air and the thermal source the most efficient system should be located as close as possible to the heat transfer ingress/egress source in the room. That would be the windows. Existing systems are near but not adjacent the windows. The present invention locates the heat transfer media at the window. In this way a lower temperature differential in the heat/cool transfer media (preferably water) located closer to the window can maintain the average room temperature as well as emit as much energy into a room as would a higher temperature differential source located further from the window.
A further problem with the prior art radiators, especially those that use water as the fluid heat transfer medium, is that in the event of an uncompensated cold ingress, the fluid heat transfer media can freeze, bursting the shell of the radiator or damaging any of the components contained therein the shell, and leading to disastrous flooding, or reduced efficiency.
This new design and physical relocation allows the present invention to be designed for application with moderate heat transfer media temperatures thus enabling much more efficient heating/cooling systems to be installed through the use of heat pumps, heat recovery, geothermal heat pump, solar hot water, geothermal hot water, ground source heat pump, and exhaust air energy recovery coupled with water-to-water heat pump.
Henceforth, the architecturally and thermally improved perimeter radiator fulfills a long felt need in the building heating/cooling industry. This new invention utilizes and combines known and new technologies in a unique and novel configuration to overcome the aforementioned problems and accomplish this.